But when he looked out to see Border Patrol, security guards and police forming a frenzied phalanx along the river, he felt fear.

“The way they were acting, the way the police were arranged all around the entrances and above the border wall, it kind of freaked me out,” said Cardona, a junior majoring in journalism. “I felt that they were scared about something bigger happening.”

In September 2009, bullets from “the other side” grazed a campus building. No one was injured, but something had changed.

Fifteen months later, the rat-tat-tat across the border has become a familiar sound.

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The university has invested in a sophisticated communication system that includes loudspeakers in every building and parking lot, can send text alerts to every student and member of the faculty. Incoming freshman will be given a power point presentation on security. Campus police have Border Patrol on speed dial.

One middle-of-the-night U.S. government communiqué in early September sent police knocking on dorms, warning students to stay indoors.

“Our dorms are right there, close to the river,” said Campus Police Chief John Cardoza, who fielded the advisory. “The best approach at that time was to just go and get together with the (resident assistants) and let everybody know that there was going to be some shooting south of the border.”

Cardoza, a veteran Rio Grande Valley police chief, said his 21-member force has become so astute at monitoring radio buzz and cameras trained on the border that they've become another layer of border security.

“There's always little gunbattles over there. Sometimes I hear about them before they do, and I let them know,” he said of his workings with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The “all-hazards” response to the Nov. 5 battles that raged for hours in Matamoros was the only possible reaction for a campus so close to the border that spectators at that afternoon's soccer tournament could hear the warfare.

“We don't know if bullets do come across, if they're going to land or where they're going to land,” he said. “They can go through buildings, metals and things. That's why when we hear of any situational activity south of the border, we're constantly keeping an eye on it.”

Campus lockdown

The Nov. 5 clashes that brought down Gulf Cartel bigwig Antonio “Tony Tormenta” Cárdenas Guillén and killed a Mexican journalist also prompted UTB to call a Friday afternoon lockdown. Classes and Homecoming weekend events were canceled or moved off campus.

The university, with the “Education Without Borders” slogan on its bilingual Christmas card, is forced to make allowances for classes missed and coursework turned in late by the hundreds of students whose commute traverses a war zone.

U.S. State Department travel warnings have shut down any university-sanctioned travel to Mexico. Online has become a lifeline, but it's a weak substitute for science in the sierra or international study in the field.

Cardona senses a budding resentment among the overwhelmingly Mexican American student body against those who are Mexican, as though they're bringing their troubled country with them.

“There's a lot of people here who have such a negative association with Mexico; they even stigmatize Mexicans who come from Mexico,” he said, noting that grudging remarks escalated with the scuttled Homecoming. “It's like unnecessary, I think, because we're all Hispanics.”

With its tiled fountains, sienna-toned bricks and Spanish-style domes, the campus long had been an oasis between international bridges and the bustle of a free trade-era border town.

There are handsome new buildings, including a state-of-the-art recreation center, library and arts center. There is a gravitation-wave astronomy center and classical guitar festivals in the recital hall. The chess team recruits from around the world, building on Brownsville's reputation for producing young prodigies.

Graduate programs are growing, and the university this semester awards its first two doctorates. The dorms, converted from a motel and home to about 240 students, were part of the university's attempt to instill more campus life.

And there's the “friendly” fence. Two years ago, President Juliet Garcia went to war against Homeland Security Department plans for an imposing structure that would slice through campus. The compromise was to reinforce an existing chain-link fence. Campus and community members seeded it with Carolina jasmine.

The fence runs north of and sits below the levee, an earthen wall patrolled by Border Patrol.

To the south, jutting out like a thumb surrounded on three sides by the Rio Grande, is a no-man's-land sprinkled with markers from historic border skirmishes and the flags of the campus golf course.

It's not a joke, said Robert Lucio, who has been lessee and operator of the course since 1987.

“We have a very unique situation, with university property, including this property, reaching to the banks of the river. I don't think we've ever felt that that was a negative ever,” Lucio said. “What's happened recently with the border violence ... it affects all of us obviously, and we're not used to that. And we don't want to get used to that.”

Violence claims student

Students who live on the U.S. side say they've learned to live with it, though many worry about extended family in Mexico.

“We're definitely concerned about what's happening,” said Cesar Gonzalez, a 23-year-old studying music education. “It's part of going to school here. We hope the situation gets better.”

Daniel Beltrán, a communications major from Matamoros, decided after the Nov. 5 shootout he'd had enough. He found a friend to room with on the U.S. side and has since made only a fleeting visit back.

“There's a shooting every single day,” he said. “Every single day.

It used to be far away, like who cares, it's on the very outskirts of the city,” he added. “Then they started adding bombs, grenades. ... They started doing it downtown. I would be on my computer, listening, like, what is that? Fireworks? It is a bomb. ... You kind of freak out. Once or twice, you kind of let it go. But every day? Every night?”

In early October, students learned that one of their own had become a casualty of the violence.

Jonathon William Torres Cazares, an 18-year-old U.S. citizen who lived in Matamoros, died Sept. 30. According to still-unverified reports, he was one of two people pulled by gang members from a bus traveling south of Matamoros.

Torres Cazares was born in Georgia but spent much of his life in Mexico. He was popular among classmates at the campus language institute, where he was sharpening his English before beginning courses in nursing.

He'd e-mailed instructor Eugene Novogrodsky of plans to visit his father in a town south of Matamoros. He was killed on a Thursday; the campus learned about it the following week.

“There are many, many versions of what happened on that bus,” Novogrodsky said. “All I know is this was one smart guy. He had the best average in the class and was easily the best conversation student. ... The class was never quite the same after he died.”

Novogrodsky hears of students trapped in their homes, afraid to go out for days at a time. Some have reported blockades making it impossible for them to get out of their neighborhoods.

“It pops up in excuses. It pops up in essays,” he said. “Somebody just got an “Incomplete” from me because of that. It's the first time I've really ever had an incomplete based on violence.”